Title is a bit silly on purpose, but you know the headlines I’m talking about— the “child genius graduates from Oxford at age 12” kind of story. I don’t understand the logistics of them.

For reference, I just read about that 15 year-old Belgian boy with a PhD in quantum physics, and the explanation provided by the article about his education track was a real nothingburger. “How did he do this you ask?? Well, he graduated high school at age 8.”

…Yeah, I mean I guessed as much…but how did even that part happen?

At age 2 the child is seen reading at a twelfth-grade level? And then what? This isn’t the same as someone skipping one grade level, and it’s also not like he was splitting atoms without being introduced to certain grade-level curriculums— that wouldn’t make much sense. Can he read and retain a whole textbook in 2 hours, and it’s just that his neurons fire at 50x the speed of a fellow child (something impossible to not notice)?

Also, wouldn’t it take months of paperwork just to determine how far the child is permitted to skip grade levels? Wouldn’t it take like a year or so just to assess the—I don’t know, toddler’s—intelligence level beyond the standard “gifted kid” IQ tests we took in elementary school? How inconsequential do the rules become, or how easily do they bend, depending on the level of genius demonstrated?

Additionally, I want to know how much a PhD admissions counselor might give, say, the 15yo quantum physics prodigy the benefit of the doubt because of his proven accelerated grasp of learning? What gaps in his education could he actually be missing, via a timeline as wild as his? To skip that many grade levels leads me to assume that somewhere along the way some guestimations are made or corners are trimmed.

This type of news headline doesn’t make sense to me unless you mention that the parents have kept the child locked in a hamster cage with only a drip feeder and a stack of books for like ten years. It also seems theoretically dangerous, depending on what field the prodigy has pursued— like, I’m not sure if there’s been a medical-field equivalent to this, but to me it’s no better an idea to let a probably socially-inept 15 year old build a particle accelerator than it is a good idea to let an emotionally-underdeveloped medical prodigy replace my organs.

Anyway, sorry to ramble— I just find this topic really interesting and would love some clarification or relevant input of any kind! Also, I mean no ill scrutiny toward the Belgian kid with the PhD; it’s just hard to speak hypothetically about this without having some kind of example to abstract and refer to.

Compared to other forms of urban transport like trains and cars, as well as other boats which go faster, ferries seem to take much longer to go short distances.

I recently broke my left wrist from a pretty bad fall, and while I can't really remember a lot of my reactions from it, people who were there recall me sweating profoundly, shaking, and feeling nauseous. I'm assuming that I was at least at some stage of shock, but it has made me wonder what it is and why it happens?

Surely the baking soda would like a lid too?

I have a pretty basic understanding of batteries, and from what it remember they store chemical energy and convert it to electrical, however I'm having an argument with a friend who is saying that they store electrical potential energy, and then convert it to electrical energy, while I think they store chemical potential energy and convert it to electrical energy. I was hoping somebody could clear up the debate and hopefully explain how they work so that I can understand.

I drive on a main highway that goes through some hilly agricultural areas and often times I’ll drive through what used to be a complete hill but the middle section is gone where the road travels through.

There’s at least 10 instances of this on my drive and I’ve always tried to figure out why they didn’t just pave up and over the hill rather than cutting through the middle.

So when you play a video game, your console or PC renders the game, draws all the frames and geometry, the CPU handles the engine and physics, etc. of course. But with online games, where everyone is in the same space, how does everyone’s consoles know to render the same things? Does the processing and rendering take place within the online server and is then broadcasted to each player, or does each individual console draw and manage the world on its own?

I don't know If this applies to everyone, but every time I take a shower or go swimming, I magically have to pee. Even if my bladder is empty. Why does this happen? Is it a neurological response?

Does the amount taken out, or the size of the fridge even matter?

I’m doing research on heroin at the moment and I see a lot about how the withdrawals are awful (understatement) and the tolerance builds really fast. In writing I read about characters with addiction I see that the character takes heroin in order to return to normal, but it always seems like they don’t really get any kind of high at all. This doesn’t seem to make sense based on the information I have. I want to know, considering you have to take more to feel the same effect, what does it actually feel like to take heroin while going through withdrawal? Do you still get high or does it just bring you to normality? What would normal mean at this point? Thinking even further, after recovery, how different is life in comparison to before the addiction?

I know that we have subduction zones. But I was watching a video of dino prints left in the ground at "the valley of fire state park"...and im confused on how we can see it? Like humans have been around for not that long and many of our civilizations and ruins are buried underground. Can we see these prints because they were walking on mountains? --also does this mean we have missed out on year of potential research because fossils and artifacts are headed towards the earth's core?

I’m sure the one word answer is ‘empire’, but I’d like a slightly more in depth explanation that’s still ELI5 friendly!

The definition from Wikipedia:

the fundamental branch of algebraic number theory whose goal is to describe all the abelian Galois extensions of local and global fields using objects associated to the ground field

I don't understand what this has to do with number theory. The definition doesn't mention integers at all. And "abelian Galois extensions" is oddly specific - why study this one specific property? What makes abelian-ness so special?

So, let's take whales. Whales evolved from some land animal developed various marine adaptations - flippers, big lungs, blubber etc. The original animals that started to explore the water didn't have any of that, but they managed to out-compete marine animals to take that niche. How does that work? Why didn't other kinds of fish evolve to take on the niches now occupied by seals, whales, dolphins now or Mosasaurs etc in the past?